When Sam Morris answers the door, the first impression is that he’s tall, lanky, handsome and friendly. “Hi, I’m Sam,” he says.

Sam likes to help his mother, Carolyn Morris, make things: beading, weaving, helping sort beads, creating patterns, and threading his mother’s hand-made paper beads onto the post of a yad (hand in Hebrew), a pointer used by a torah (bible) reader in a synagogue to indicate the place in the scripture.

“He’s a process person,” says Carolyn Morris of her son, 22, who is autistic.

“I enjoy it,” Sam said.

Morris, a social worker, is also a long-time crafter and was an art and advertising student before switching to art therapy, and ultimately to recreational therapy, working primarily with head injury patients.

She developed the complex process for creating the paper beads inspired by African beads she had seen at an art fair. Looking online for a way to create Judaica items with the beads, Morris stumbled across the work of well-known Israeli artist Amnon Caspi. She was struck by the sensitivity, detail and beauty of the hand on his yads, so she contacted Caspi to create a special yad with the hand, a post for the beads and an end-cap.

As they discussed the project, she told Caspi that her specifications for the yad were necessary so that they could be assembled by individuals with special needs. She told Caspi about Sam.

“He wrote me back that now he’s crying with his ‘tears on the carpeting.’” Morris said. Caspi is a polio survivor and has opened a workshop in Israel to employ immigrants and individuals with special needs.

When Sam was in pre-school, it had become clear Morris would have to stop working to take care of him. She put her time to use doing home-based schooling for Sam, advocating for special-needs programming at the Jewish Community Center, and helping to develop the Friendship Circle, the West Bloomfield non-profit that provides programs for special needs individuals and families.

The home-schooling group started small, but quickly grew far past the original limit of seven students, expanding into all grade levels. Morris had a donor for a building and was on the verge of making that leap when she was struck with dysautonomia, a failure of the neurological system that regulates the body’s involuntary processes. Her partner couldn’t keep the school afloat single-handedly, so the school closed.

She says that while she was ill, Sam would sit down on the bed and ask her to show him how to bead.

“I can’t say no to him. He kept me going,” she said.

Morris now uses the beads in her business, Bead Your Moment (beadyourmoment.com), which makes jewelry and Judaica with beads crafted from photos and mementos such as Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations. She also creates projects for Sam and his friends to help create the unique hand-made treasures.

“As it had helped me rehabilitate when I was sick, I see it doing things for special needs kids,” said Morris, who recently involved Friendship Circle participants in a four day workshop.

Like many special needs individuals, Sam likes to put his abilities to work. He has a job at the Henry Ford Hospital cafeteria. He has formed a relationship with Caspi, communicating with him in Israel via Skype, and Caspi has encouraged him to work.

“Young adults like him have so much to give,” Morris said. “I’d love to have a workshop, making things that can be sold. It would be great to have a group of artisans that would come together to do this. Everybody can have a part to give, which makes a whole, not just of the products, but of all who are working on it.”

Morris reflected that she’s been “thrown into the unknown over and over.”

“Who knows what will come from it all. I’ll just never stop at it. I was born into an imperfect world,” Morris said. “But we’re meant to make it better.”